Google Ramps Up Bid To Dominate Music Streaming World

Google just can’t keep out of the competition. Less than a month after Amazon began offering free music streaming to Prime users, Google buys Songza.

Songza, an online music provider catering to your favorite genre, mood, and the time of day, allows listeners to choose from hundreds of playlist options, including “working in an office” and “brand new music.” Now, Songza is being added to the Google Play store. In a statement on Songza’s website, listeners are reassured that “no immediate changes to Songza are planned, other than making it faster, smarter, and even more fun to use.”

Google already owns All Access, a subscription streaming service competing with Spotify in the Google Play store. According to The New York Times, “All Access is already available in 28 countries, but music executives complain that its appeal has been limited.” Google hopes that Songza — with its ready-made playlists – will provide Google with more room to influence the music streaming world.

The price of Google’s deal with Songza is still unknown, although the Times believes it is a smaller deal than Apple’s $3 billion for Beat Electronics, which offers the online streaming service Music Beats.

“Apple’s purchase of Beats [has] brought speculation of many further deals among streaming music services, many of which are run by small start-ups with limited budgets,” the Times reports.

As Songza joins the ranks of online music providers to be bought by major players in the tech industry, users will be forced to choose between Google- or Apple-owned services, and privately owned providers like Pandora and Spotify.